Formality vs. Professionalism

At 6:30pm last night, I found myself standing inside the exhibition hall, it snowing outside, a friend of mine at my house alone, and me meeting with two Englishmen and an Icelander. It was a bit surreal, especially when in the midst of this odd setting, the Icelander broke into a very formal tone (and then left a few minutes later). 

From an American perspective, Icelanders stand on formality to a remarkable degree, something that seems almost quaint, a vestige of how things used to be. I've sometimes thought this formality was a necessary defensive structure in a country where everyone knows everyone else, but otherwise I haven't been much for it. But this morning it struck me that it might be at the heart of the difference between Icelandic and non-Icelandic approaches to business relationships. Because me and the English gents, even though we'd never met before, right after the Icelander left, we went straight into talking at length about the real meat of the problems that needed to be fixed, with absolutely no formality. In other words, we were very professional. I've never seen professionalism and formality as mutually exclusive, but I think they might be, or that they serve very different purposes.  The problem is, once one has become accustomed to professionalism as a basis of business relationships, formality seems an unnecessary burden, a demonstration of a lack of confidence. But in a country where formality is the norm, professionalism must seem bizarrely casual, perhaps even a sign of unwillingness to take on the role and responsibility of a job. Wish I'd realized this sooner, but alas, my curriculum did not include a lot of business classes. 

I also caught a bit of the Palin-Biden debate, and think somehow this post is also related to that.